News

Mike PItts reviewing the Heelstone - Pit news

Let's have a dispassionate look at the latest Stonehenge news. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project (University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection) continues its geophysical survey. So what's new?

The press release is titled "Discoveries provide evidence of a celestial procession at Stonehenge", which is pretty much what all the journalists who reported it said (often just copying the release). It includes a "podflash" interview with Vince Gaffney, and there is a video visualisation of the theory here.

The Independent really went to town, using words like "extraordinary" and "massive", suggesting the discoveries might "turn the accepted chronology of the Stonehenge landscape on its head", and that "Stonehenge site's sacred status is at least 500 years older than previously thought". The project as a whole is going to "transform scholars' understanding of the famous monument's origins, history and meaning". Golly.

I couldn't see where all this came from, so I contacted the Birmingham University press office, who very kindly gave me these geophysics plots. As no other news media anywhere as far as I can see has used them, I thought it would be helpful to post them here. Then we can see what is being talked about.

I mostly leave it to others to look at these plots and comment on the interpretations (please do). What I will do here is describe what Birmingham team found, and add a bit of context.

They pick on two geophysical anomalies, which they call pits, just south of the northern line of the Cursus: